Palestine and the Palestinians in the 21st Century

Edited by Rochelle Davis and Mimi Kirk

Publication Year: 2013

Recent developments in Palestinian political, economic, and social life have resulted in greater insecurity and diminishing confidence in Israel’s willingness to abide by political agreements or the Palestinian leadership’s ability to forge consensus. This volume examines the legacies of the past century, conditions of life in the present, and the possibilities and constraints on prospects for peace and self-determination in the future. These historically grounded essays by leading scholars engage the issues that continue to shape Palestinian society, such as economic development, access to resources, religious transformation, and political movements.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Acknowlegments

Introduction

The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed both significant ends and noteworthy beginnings for Palestinians. In this volume, specialists on Palestinian politics, history, economics, and society examine the continuities that bind the twentieth to the twenty-first century. The contributors address these junctures with an analytical eye on the effects of colonial ...

Part 1: Colonial Projects and Twentieth-Century Currents

1 The Zionist Colonization of Palestine in the Context of Comparative Settler Colonialism

To deeply understand Zionism and the state of Israel, one
must engage with the field of comparative settler colonialism. The expansion
and conquest by Europe that began in 1500 produced two kinds of related
but clearly distinguishable forms of colonialism. One was metropole
colonialism, in which Europeans conquered and ruled vast territories but ...

2 Colonial Occupation and Development in the West Bank and Gaza: Understanding the Palestinian Economy through the Work of Yusif Sayigh

The Oslo peace process initiated in 1993 brought hopes
for the emergence of a vibrant economy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
(WBGS), one that would provide a solid foundation for the establishment
of a viable Palestinian state. Yet Palestinian economic growth since 1993 has
been marked by major fluctuations and unsustainability. Palestinian real ...

3 War, Peace, Civil War: A Pattern?

Since 1974, there has been a pattern of war, peace or appeasement,
and then civil war or dissent in the ranks of the Palestinian national
movement. After the wars of 1971 in Jordan and 1973 between the
Arabs and Israel, the PLO adopted the Step-by-Step Program, which opened
the door for a two-state solution. This was followed by the establishment...

Part 2: Politics, Law, and Society: Twenty-First-Century Developments and Paradigms

4 Palestinians Following the 2006 Legislative Election: A Critical Election?

Elections and change of government are part of the democratic
process. Following every democratic election, a government continues
its performance as the executive branch or is changed. Such a change is
a reflection of the changing preferences of the people, the collective of citizens.
The change can be reflected in two ways. The first, in which the new ...

5 Before Gaza, After Gaza: Examining the New Reality in Israel/Palestine

In the nineteen years since the Oslo process began, Palestinians
have suffered losses not seen since the beginning of Israeli occupation
and arguably since the Nakba, the losses of 1948. The scholar Joseph
Massad has compellingly argued that it is wrong to think of the Nakba as “a
history of the past”; rather, it is “a history of the present,” a historical
epoch ...

6 The Legal Trajectory of the Palestinian Refugee Issue: From Exclusion to Ambiguity

At the end of 2011, out of a total Palestinian population
of about 11.2 million persons, some 7.4 million were refugees or internally
displaced.1 The Palestinian people constitute one of the largest and longest-standing unresolved situations of displacement in the world; about one
in three refugees worldwide is Palestinian.2 Given the size and protracted ...

7 The Debate on Islamism and Secularism: The Case of Palestinian Women's Movements

Conflict over the construction of gender and the ideal woman is not a neutral
or primarily religious concern. Nationalists and Islamists alike seek to
establish an ideal society that depends on a particular conception of womanhood.1 The difference between the two conceptions is that religious or Islamist...

8 Other Worlds to Live In: Palestinian Retrievals of Religion and Tradition under Conditions of Chronic National Collapse

Today, perhaps more than ever, the question of Palestinian identity has become obvious and urgent. The always-fragile national consensus has ceded to open schism. In the wake of devastating interfactional bloodletting, the Islamic political
movement, Hamas, now dominates the Gaza Strip while the weakened secular-nationalist Fatah movement putatively ...

Part 3: Trajectories for the Future, Solutions for a State

9 Palestine in the American Political Arena: Is a "Reset" Possible?

There are two competing narratives about America and
Palestine. One derives from the Protestant missionaries who early in the
nineteenth century went to the “Holy Land” to convert the “natives” (an
impossible task) and who ended up as educators. The descendants of these
hardy and talented people not only established impressive schools and colleges,...

10 Human Rights and the Rule of Law

Between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, Israel embarked on an unprecedented aerial and ground offensive against the Gaza Strip. In a span of twenty-two days, Israeli ground and aerial forces demolished 2,400 homes, 21 schools, and 60 police stations, and killed approximately 1,300 civilians, 280 of them children. The onslaught was particularly ...

During Israel’s December 2008/January 2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians,1 veteran Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn reported that Israeli society reminded him “more than ever of the unionists in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.” Like Israelis, he wrote, unionists were a community...

12 One State: The Realistic Solution

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, declared in April 2009 that Israel is not bound by the commitments it entered into at the Annapolis summit in November
2007.1 He was followed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the then freshly minted prime minister, in a policy speech in June of the same year, which categorically ruled out the possibility of the ...

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